Villanova in the Media

Media Highlights from December 2017 - January 2018

The New York Times featured a project done by students in Villanova Professor Ed Guinan’s astrobiology course, aimed at finding out what foods may successfully grow in Martin Soil.

Villanova’s distinctive academic programs, world-class faculty, cutting-edge research and super-star students place the University in the national media spotlight. Below is a sampling of media highlights from December 2017-January 2018:

When the intelligence committees become political, oversight of the intelligence agencies becomes “just about impossible,” said David M. Barrett, a professor of political-science at Villanova University who has written a book on the C.I.A. and Congress. “Intelligence becomes just another political football.”

In 1974, her biography “Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History” contended that the third president had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings. For this, Catherine Kerrison, a professor of American history at Villanova University, accurately notes, Brodie was “excoriated by a cadre of Jefferson experts.”

Many people know that Thomas Jefferson had a long-standing relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. But fewer know that they had four children, three boys and a girl, who survived to adulthood. Born into slavery, Sally’s daughter Harriet boarded a stagecoach to freedom at age 21, bound for Washington, D.C. Her father had given her $50 for her travel expenses. She would never see her mother or younger brothers again. … Catherine Kerrison is an associate professor of history at Villanova University, and the author of the forthcoming book "Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black in a Young America.”

As he does during every papal visit, Pope Francis produced plenty of surprises in Chile: He married a couple during a flight, stopped his motorcade to help a fallen police officer and wept with victims of sex abuse by priests … “These violent acts may be a first in the history of the ‘traveling papacy,’” said Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia.

In the current bull market, it seems out of fashion to talk about dividend-paying stocks. After all, the Standard & Poor's 500 index garnered an annual return of 20 percent in 2017. When investors are showered with juicy capital gains, who pays attention to dividends in the single lower digits? … Meg Luo has a Ph.D. in finance and is an associate professor of finance at Villanova School of Business, Villanova University.

When Villanova officials first contacted Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry about making a $1 million donation to his alma mater, he was skeptical. "A million dollars?" Lowry recalled saying. When he found out the money would be used for upgrades to the Pavilion, the facility where he spends the offseason working out, he quickly came around.

Here’s an interplanetary botany discovery that took college students and not NASA scientists to find: Hops — the flowers used to add a pleasant bitterness to beer — grow well in Martian soil … “I don’t know if it’s a practical plant, but it’s doing fairly well,” said Edward F. Guinan, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University.

The 2020 Census is set to take place at a time of political turmoil, when Americans are experiencing a crisis in confidence in federal institutions. Unfortunately, the census is likely to exacerbate that crisis, because the Trump administration has enlisted it in the work of maintaining Republican political control … by Judith Giesberg, professor of history at Villanova University, where she specializes in the Civil War era.

It wasn't so long ago that it was common, even expected, to see a woman seductively eating a cheeseburger or trading flowers for sex during the Super Bowl … So while brands may refrain from showcasing scantily clad women—to be sure, just 6% of Super Bowl commercials had sexual messages over the last decade according to research out of Villanova University—in many cases, they simply aren't featuring women at all.

Personal assistants and artificial intelligence are center stage at this year’s consumer electronics show in Las Vegas … Sister Ilia Delio is a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University in Philadelphia. She said that consumers need to be aware that too much reliance on our devices and artificial intelligence could change the way we react to other humans.

With few exceptions, too much of anything can be inefficient and wasteful. But, wouldn’t it be nice if we had more choices, more competitors in the market, when we were looking to buy access to the Internet for our home or business? By Dr. Mary Kelly, Associate Chair of the Department of Economics at Villanova School of Business.

From the 17th century through the Civil War (1861-65), about 8 million black people were enslaved in America. They picked cotton on Southern plantations, toiled as carpenters and blacksmiths, and tended to their masters’ homes and families … Judith Giesberg, who heads Last Seen—a project by Villanova University and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia—says most of the ads on that site were placed by mothers looking for their children or children looking for their mothers.

It will sound like bad news. Over the next few weeks, some of the world’s biggest companies, household names including Microsoft, Google and Johnson & Johnson, are likely to warn that their financial results will be severely dented, if not altogether wiped out, by huge tax bills that they have to pay to the Internal Revenue Service … “Although hundreds of companies are going to report unfavorable charges, ultimately the legislation should be a big win for them,” said J. Richard Harvey, a Villanova University law professor and former I.R.S. official.

The stock market is up — and so are annual bonuses for Wall Streeters, with New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli estimating that the average bonus is on track to reach $143,462, up from $138,210 in 2016 … “Workers may want other kinds of benefits,” said Cheryl Carleton, assistant professor of economics at Villanova School of Business. “Flexible hours, telecommuting, onsite childcare, and other perks. If you only have so much of a pool for compensation, you have to prioritize, and people are showing that they do like these things.”

Fresh details of Uber Technologies Inc.’s alleged surveillance tactics -- by human and electronic means -- and in particular its scraping of competitors’ information from the internet were revealed in a court filing … Fusking can be illegal under U.S. laws designed to protect access to information on networks, said Michael Risch, a professor at Villanova University School of Law in Pennsylvania.

Every time you think the last man has fallen, there’s one more to add to the ever-growing list of sexual harassment claims … Despite the fact that sexual harassment has been against the law since 1964, Terri Boyer, founding director of the Anne Welsh McNulty Institute for Women’s Leadership at Villanova University, said that it has long been an accepted part of our institutional cultures.

Multinational corporations have a lot to like in both the House and Senate tax-overhaul proposals. Depending on a company's structure and operations, there could be a lot to worry about as well … But for most companies, these limits likely aren’t severe enough to change the overall tax benefit firms ultimately receive; rather, they affect when companies can claim the benefits, according to J. Richard Harvey, a Villanova University law professor and former U.S. Treasury official. “Public companies are generally not that concerned about timing items,” Mr. Harvey said.

When Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was discussing the impact of social media on American values at a luncheon in the nation’s capital on Wednesday afternoon, he only briefly alluded to his own negative experiences online over the past week. … “There is substantial confusion in public debates about this issue,” says Brett Frischmann, professor of law, business, and economics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “One side frames net neutrality as heavy government regulation that inevitably involves government micro-management of internet activities.”

About Villanova

Villanova University was founded in 1842 by the Order of St. Augustine. To this day, Villanova’s Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition is the cornerstone of an academic community in which students learn to think critically, act compassionately and succeed while serving others. There are more than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students in the University’s six colleges.